Abstract
Flourishing in Babylon by Joe Aldred discusses the life of people of African descent, particularly those living in the UK, and how, over the years, they have dealt with the challenge of living away from their place of origin. The book is written in six chapters. The first chapter contains the writer’s key ideas, which he then develops in the rest of the book.
Aldred’s central thesis is that Black British people have tended to understand their life in the UK from the perspective that they are an oppressed people who need liberation. This mentality of being an oppressed people, he argues, has been a hinderance to their ability to use their God-given ‘agency’. Using the Old Testament book of Jeremiah as a blueprint for how a people in the diaspora should approach life, he argues that Black British people should ‘build and settle’ in the UK, pray for the ‘peace and prosperity’ of the country, and see themselves as having a ‘shared destiny’ with the white people within it.
In a chapter entitled ‘False prophets’, Aldred explores how some narratives that circulate among Black British people could be detrimental to their ability to flourish. One of these is the notion that racism can be eradicated, which traps Black British people into pursuing that impossible goal rather than applying themselves to more realistic ones. Instead of these unhelpful ideas, which he terms ‘false oracles’, he argues for a theology that asserts the humanity of people of African descent. Black British people should remind themselves and everyone else that they are made in the image of God.
This is a very readable book. Even though the issues being discussed are complex, Aldred’s writing style makes his points easy to follow. He draws on his personal experience as a Black person, other scholars, the Bible and history, thereby making the book accessible to readers with a wide range of theological abilities.
The book is clearly an important contribution to public discourse on racism, particularly on the question of whether anti-racism approaches should develop as racial issues change. It appears to argue that many of the established responses to racism were never right in the first place. It is particularly critical of British Black Theology, which it sees as operating on the oppression paradigm. He presents the practitioners as an elite group whose actions can further undermine the agency of ordinary Black people.
As one would expect, there are aspects of the book that some people would see as weaknesses or find contentious. For example, it can be difficult to understand Aldred’s position on fighting racism. At some points, he decries a confrontational approach, opting for a conciliatory one, yet at other points he criticizes others for not being sufficiently militant. Many Black people would struggle with the suggestion that the reason they are behind in society is that they have not been sufficiently focused on flourishing, rather than because of the various ways in which society has held them back. And some practitioners in this area would find the use of terms like ‘false prophets’ and ‘house slaves’ to refer to them as unnecessarily antagonistic.
A problematic theological issue in the book concerns its view on the relationship between God and human agency. At various points, Aldred argues that God works through human beings, so people should not sit idly waiting on God. However, in the way he stresses this point, he is at risk of suggesting that there is a limit to what God can do. While one would accept that God uses human beings to fulfil his will, there are numerous examples in the Bible of God acting outside this. An overdependence on God can, as the writer fears, suppress human agency, but equally there is the opposite danger of an overemphasis on human agency devaluing ideas of God’s sovereignty and omnipotence.
This is nonetheless a useful contribution to discourse on racism. It is courageous in seeking to challenge what might be seen as widely accepted ideas among Black British people, and its blend of personal experience, scholarly work and biblical reflection makes it accessible and useful to many people.